This weekend sees the opening of a major exhibition of new work by David Hockney at the Royal Academy, including a display of his iPad drawings and a series of new films. Hockney has embraced the iPad as a means of making art, saying in an interview in the Guardian this month that 'the iPad is like an endless piece of paper that perfectly fitted the feeling I had that painting should be big.'

Hockney's adoption of the iPad is the natural next step in his interest in using technology to explore art. In 1986, he was experimenting with Xerox and collage (the picture on the left is a self-portrait composed on an office photocopier) and in an interview in the Guardian with art critic Waldemar Januszckak on his 50th birthday in 1987, he touches on how computer technology can radically affect the way images are perceived.

Hockney's innovations also included the use of the Quantel Paintbox, appearing in the documentary 'Painting with Light' to demonstrate its groundbreaking qualities.In the television preview below, Hockney describes how it feels to paint with this electronic paintbox.

As well as embracing computers, Hockney also celebrated the fax, calling it "the wonderful machine, the enemy of totalitarianism, the return of handwritten letters." In the story below, Martin Wainwright reports on the fax connecting Hockney in LA with his hometown of Bradford in 1989.